Viṣṇu’s three steps

Viṣṇu’s three steps name a recurring image of the god’s cosmic stride and, in the edition’s explicit interpretation, map that stride onto the sun’s daily course. The image joins divine action to a natural cycle: the steps mark the sun’s rising, culmination, and setting.

The Three Steps as a Solar Allegory

The commentary explains the three steps as a solar allegory: Viṣṇu is identified with the sun, and his successive strides correspond to sunrise, the sun at its height, and sunset. The threefold sequence turns a divine act into a pattern of the visible day, linking the god’s movement with the sun’s passage across the sky.

An Epithet and a Recurring Allusion

The notes also identify Viṣṇu as the God of the Three Steps and observe that the image is mentioned repeatedly in the poem. It therefore functions not only as a description of one episode but as a recurring allusion through which the poem can invoke Viṣṇu’s stride. The commentary places it alongside an account of Viṣṇu’s incarnations, connecting the image with divine descent without reducing its solar meaning to that context.

Meaning and Scope

The solar reading is specifically supplied by the edition’s commentary; it is an interpretation of the image, not a separate event narrated in the cited passages. Its force lies in the correspondence between three ordered strides and three recognizable phases of the sun. By identifying those phases with Viṣṇu, the gloss makes the daily cycle legible as divine action while preserving the image’s place as a repeated motif in the epic.